GRAHAM SPEAKS HIS WORD
For a time the Master of the Earth was not even master of his own mind.
Even his will seemed a will not his own, his own acts surprised him and
were but a part of the confusion of strange experiences that poured
across his being. These things were definite, the negroes were coming,
Helen Wotton had warned the people of their coming, and he was Master of
the Earth. Each of these facts seemed struggling for complete possession
of his thoughts. They protruded from a background of swarming halls,
elevated passages, rooms jammed with ward leaders in council,
kinematograph and telephone rooms, and windows looking out on a seething
sea of marching men. The men in yellow, and men whom he fancied were
called Ward Leaders, were either propelling him forward or following him
obediently; it was hard to tell. Perhaps they were doing a little of
both. Perhaps some power unseen and unsuspected propelled them all. He
was aware that he was going to make a proclamation to the People of the
Earth, aware of certain grandiose phrases floating in his mind as the
thing he meant to say. Many little things happened, and then he found
himself with the man in yellow entering a little room where this
proclamation of his was to be made.
This room was grotesquely latter-day in its appointments. In the centre
was a bright oval lit by shaded electric lights from above. The rest was
in shadow, and the double finely fitting doors through which he came from
the swarming Hall of the Atlas made the place very still. The dead thud
of these as they closed behind him, the sudden cessation of the tumult in
which he had been living for hours, the quivering circle of light, the
whispers and quick noiseless movements of vaguely visible attendants in
the shadows, had a strange effect upon Graham. The huge ears of a
phonographic mechanism gaped in a battery for his words, the black eyes
of great photographic cameras awaited his beginning, beyond metal rods
and coils glittered dimly, and something whirled about with a droning
hum. He walked into the centre of the light, and his shadow drew together
black and sharp to a little blot at his feet.
The vague shape of the thing he meant to say was already in his mind. But
this silence, this isolation, the withdrawal from that contagious crowd,
this audience of gaping, glaring machines, had not been in his
anticipation. All his supports seemed withdrawn together; he seemed to
have dropped into this suddenly, suddenly to have discovered himself. In
a moment he was changed. He found that he now feared to be inadequate, he
feared to be theatrical, he feared the quality of his voice, the quality
of his wit; astonished, he turned to the man in yellow with a
propitiatory gesture. "For a moment," he said, "I must wait. I did not
think it would be like this. I must think of the thing I have to say."
While he was still hesitating there came an agitated messenger with news
that the foremost aeroplanes were passing over Madrid.
"What news of the flying stages?" he asked.
"The people of the south-west wards are ready."
"Ready!"
He turned impatiently to the blank circles of the lenses again.
"I suppose it must be a sort of speech. Would to God I knew certainly the
thing that should be said! Aeroplanes at Madrid! They must have started
before the main fleet.
"Oh! what can it matter whether I speak well or ill?" he said, and felt
the light grow brighter.
He had framed some vague sentence of democratic sentiment when suddenly
doubts overwhelmed him. His belief in his heroic quality and calling he
found had altogether lost its assured conviction. The picture of a
little strutting futility in a windy waste of incomprehensible
destinies replaced it. Abruptly it was perfectly clear to him that this
revolt against Ostrog was premature, foredoomed to failure, the impulse
of passionate inadequacy against inevitable things. He thought of that
swift flight of aeroplanes like the swoop of Fate towards him. He was
astonished that he could have seen things in any other light. In that
final emergency he debated, thrust debate resolutely aside, determined
at all costs to go through with the thing he had undertaken. And he
could find no word to begin. Even as he stood, awkward, hesitating,
with an indiscreet apology for his inability trembling on his lips,
came the noise of many people crying out, the running to and fro of
feet. "Wait," cried someone, and a door opened. Graham turned, and the
watching lights waned.
Through the open doorway he saw a slight girlish figure approaching. His
heart leapt. It was Helen Wotton. The man in yellow came out of the
nearer shadows into the circle of light.
"This is the girl who told us what Ostrog had done," he said.
She came in very quietly, and stood still, as if she did not want to
interrupt Graham's eloquence.... But his doubts and questionings fled
before her presence. He remembered the things that he had meant to say.
He faced the cameras again and the light about him grew brighter. He
turned back to her.
"You have helped me," he said lamely--"helped me very much.... This is
very difficult."
He paused. He addressed himself to the unseen multitudes who stared upon
him through those grotesque black eyes. At first he spoke slowly.
"Men and women of the new age," he said; "you have arisen to do battle
for the race!... There is no easy victory before us."
He stopped to gather words. He wished passionately for the gift of
moving speech.
"This night is a beginning," he said. "This battle that is coming, this
battle that rushes upon us to-night, is only a beginning. All your lives,
it may be, you must fight. Take no thought though I am beaten, though I
am utterly overthrown. I think I may be overthrown."
He found the thing in his mind too vague for words. He paused
momentarily, and broke into vague exhortations, and then a rush of speech
came upon him. Much that he said was but the humanitarian commonplace of
a vanished age, but the conviction of his voice touched it to vitality.
He stated the case of the old days to the people of the new age, to the
girl at his side.
"I come out of the past to you," he said, "with the memory of an age
that hoped. My age was an age of dreams--of beginnings, an age of noble
hopes; throughout the world we had made an end of slavery; throughout the
world we had spread the desire and anticipation that wars might cease,
that all men and women might live nobly, in freedom and peace.... So we
hoped in the days that are past. And what of those hopes? How is it with
man after two hundred years?
"Great cities, vast powers, a collective greatness beyond our dreams. For
that we did not work, and that has come. But how is it with the little
lives that make up this greater life? How is it with the common lives? As
it has ever been--sorrow and labour, lives cramped and unfulfilled, lives
tempted by power, tempted by wealth, and gone to waste and folly. The old
faiths have faded and changed, the new faith--. Is there a new faith?
"Charity and mercy," he floundered; "beauty and the love of beautiful
things--effort and devotion! Give yourselves as I would give myself--as
Christ gave Himself upon the Cross. It does not matter if you understand.
It does not matter if you seem to fail. You _know_--in the core of your
hearts you _know_. There is no promise, there is no security--nothing to
go upon but Faith. There is no faith but faith--faith which is
courage...."
Things that he had long wished to believe, he found that he believed. He
spoke gustily, in broken incomplete sentences, but with all his heart and
strength, of this new faith within him. He spoke of the greatness of
self-abnegation, of his belief in an immortal life of Humanity in which
we live and move and have our being. His voice rose and fell, and the
recording appliances hummed as he spoke, dim attendants watched him out
of the shadow....
His sense of that silent spectator beside him sustained his sincerity.
For a few glorious moments he was carried away; he felt no doubt of his
heroic quality, no doubt of his heroic words, he had it all straight and
plain. His eloquence limped no longer. And at last he made an end to
speaking. "Here and now," he cried, "I make my will. All that is mine in
the world I give to the people of the world. All that is mine in the
world I give to the people of the world. To all of you. I give it to you,
and myself I give to you. And as God wills to-night, I will live for you,
or I will die."
He ended. He found the light of his present exaltation reflected in the
face of the girl. Their eyes met; her eyes were swimming with tears of
enthusiasm.
"I knew," she whispered. "Oh! Father of the World--_Sire_! I knew you
would say these things...."
"I have said what I could," he answered lamely and grasped and clung to
her outstretched hands.